While Wearing Their White Coats: Behind the Scenes at SC Mission

By Kate Crosby, SCMA Communications Director 

 Join me throughout the weekend as I blog from behind the scenes of SC Mission Midlands, a health care event designed to provide free health care services to thousands of Midlands patients in need.

As the communications director at the South Carolina Medical Association, I am accustomed to seeing physicians daily, but not often while wearing their white coats. You see, my position privileges me to seeing physician leaders across the board room table, at the State House, at a media interview, or at a very important business meeting. I have not often been privileged to interacting with physicians in their clinical setting… until now.

A few months ago, I was asked, on behalf of the SCMA, to step in and help with physician recruitment for SC Mission Midlands, a health care event that sees hundreds of uninsured and underinsured patients and provides free health care services.

From helping the medical team collaborate and facilitate women’s care services, to filling exam rooms, to coordinating all physician volunteers, to answering questions from our cardiology specialists and medical student shadowers, I have been thrown into their clinical world, with enthusiasm, and have truly learned all that these physicians do while wearing their white coats.

It is through this role and the conversations I have had with our physician volunteers that I have found the reason why many have volunteered, why they have felt the need to give back or support our community by volunteering.

It is also through this role that I have met physicians who have been willing to dedicate their entire weekend to the event, who will drive over 100 miles to serve, who will dedicate their physician practice to being “on call” for emergencies throughout the weekend, who are volunteering for a third year in a row, or who are donating their specialty services or equipment should there be a patient with a special circumstance.

This weekend, dozens of physicians like the ones I named above will be dedicating their times and talents to take care of thousands of patients who are in desperate need of their services. For me, it is humbling and eye opening to witness. For them, it’s just another typical day… while wearing their white coats.